Purchasing Tips

Consider the following factors to make sure you find a good fitting software program.

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All Systems
Go

Six industry professionals discuss their quest for business
software and how they came away with the ultimate rewards.

Software programs can go a long way
toward improving efficiency for your company — but only if
you invest in the right system. To make sure you find a good fit
for your business, consider the following.

1. Determine your needs. Before you talk to
vendors, think about each step of your current practices and how
you envision using the software to accomplish them. Make a list of
must-have features as well as questions for the vendor. “When
we first put in our point-of-sale system, we had to think about how
we wanted to number our items,” says Kelly Reed, operations
manager at the Contemporary
Watercrafters in Gaithersburg, Md. “Or, if we bought the
same item from several different vendors, would the software be
able to handle different pricing and different case quantities from
different vendors?”

2. Talk to the vendor. Call or meet with an actual
vendor representative to discuss your company’s needs.
“Is the software going

to require that you change the way you do business in order to
accommodate the software?” Reed says. “Or will you be
able to modify the software to work with the way you already do
business?”

3. Ask around. Find out which software systems
similar businesses are using and what they like about them. Ask
about what they don’t like, too. “You have to figure
out if it’s something you can live with or not, or what the
workaround is,” Reed says. Once you’re up and running,
get in touch with other customers who use the same system to
exchange ideas about how to maximize your software.

4. Get a geek. While most software vendors provide
extensive support for their products, you also may need help
handling hardware or network connectivity issues in-house. Hiring
an outside IT contractor when these issues arise can be a valuable
investment. “If you’ve got to put a new hard disk or
graphics card in, you’re going to need somebody who can do it
for you,” Reed says. “It is important to have somebody
nearby.”

5. Be patient. Sometimes it can take a few months
or even a year to fully take advantage of the system. “That
first year, we called our system the $30,000 paperweight,”
Reed says. “Well, the next year we could see everything that
we sold during the first six months of that prior year and what we
had on hand. So we only needed to order the difference. That was
fabulous. Earlier, that process used to be an all-day thing.”